Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Piaget's Stage 2 of Cognitive Development01:14

Piaget's Stage 2 of Cognitive Development

The preoperational stage, the second of Jean Piaget's four stages of cognitive development, spans approximately ages 2 to 7 and is characterized by the emergence of symbolic thinking. During this stage, children use language, images, and symbols to represent objects and concepts, enabling them to engage in imaginative and pretend play. This symbolic thinking supports children's ability to perform make-believe actions, such as imagining a broom as a horse or their hand as a phone, blending...
Language01:16

Language

Language is a unique communication system that uses words and systematic rules to organize and transmit information. Unlike other forms of communication, which may involve postures, movements, odors, or vocalizations, language relies on symbols and grammar. This makes human communication distinct from that of other species, who also communicate but do not use language in the same way humans do.
Corballis and Suddendorf (2007) and Tomasello and Rakoczy (2003) highlight the role of language in...
Social Foundations of Self I: Play and Game01:24

Social Foundations of Self I: Play and Game

The development of self in children is deeply rooted in social interactions, mainly through stages of play and structured games. These stages, outlined by sociologist George Herbert Mead, illustrate how children progressively learn to understand and adopt social roles, forming a cohesive sense of self.The Play Stage: Imitation and Simple Role-TakingIn the early years of childhood, the play stage is characterized by imitative behavior, where children engage in role-playing based on familiar...
Language and Cognition01:27

Language and Cognition

Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
Language Development01:22

Language Development

Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
Visual Agnosia01:12

Visual Agnosia

Visual agnosia is a condition characterized by the inability to recognize visually presented objects despite having normal vision. For instance, a person with visual agnosia can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or name it. This impairment does not affect their visual field, acuity, color vision, brightness discrimination, language, or memory. An example of this condition in a social setting is someone at a dinner party asking for "that silver thing with a round end"...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Curriculum Learning with Infant Egocentric Videos.

Advances in neural information processing systemsยท2026
Same author

Rethinking the Origins of Cross-Language Effects: How Heard Verbs Influence Japanese- and English-Speaking Children's Attention to the Details of Actions.

Developmental scienceยท2026
Same author

The world through infant eyes: Evidence for the early emergence of the cardinal orientation bias.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of Americaยท2025
Same author

An edge-simplicity bias in the visual input to young infants.

Science advancesยท2024
Same author

Can lessons from infants solve the problems of data-greedy AI?

Natureยท2024
Same author

Infant vocal productions coincide with body movements.

Developmental scienceยท2024

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 29, 2026

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
07:31

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

Symbolic play connects to language through visual object recognition.

Linda B Smith1, Susan S Jones

  • 1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University-Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. smith4@indiana.edu

Developmental Science
|September 3, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Children

More Related Videos

The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
05:15

The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition

Published on: February 19, 2018

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 29, 2026

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
07:31

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
05:15

The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition

Published on: February 19, 2018

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Development
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Language Acquisition

Background:

  • Object substitution in play is linked to language learning.
  • Absence of object substitution is a marker for language delay.
  • Previous theories linked object substitution to symbolic function.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Investigate the relationship between visual object recognition and object substitution in young children.
  • Determine if visual object recognition abilities predict object substitution.
  • Propose a developmental pathway linking visual recognition, language, and symbolic play.

Main Methods:

  • Assessed object substitution in play in 63 children aged 18 to 30 months.
  • Examined developmental changes in visual object recognition, specifically recognizing objects from sparse geometric models.
  • Correlated object substitution with age, language development, and visual recognition abilities.

Main Results:

  • Object substitution emerged after children developed adult-like recognition of objects from sparse geometric models.
  • Developmental changes in visual object recognition were a stronger predictor of object substitution than language or age.
  • Object substitution is not causally linked to language delay but signals potential issues.

Conclusions:

  • Object substitution in play is dependent on mature visual object recognition skills.
  • A developmental pathway exists from visual recognition to symbolic play and language acquisition.
  • Absence of object substitution serves as an early indicator of language acquisition problems.